The morning is a bit foggy, this season’s weather is typically cold and dry: inversion layer, cold water and rich nutrients. With all these elements we are expecting to see whales, a lot of sea bird feeding activity and murky water because of the planktonic life in the marine ecosystems.
Indeed! Our expedition leader Juan Carlos Avila spotted few whales along the coast of Isabela, our crew in the bridge headed our ship close to the shoreline and we saw about four whales of different sizes. It was very difficult to identify them, but agreed they were bride’s whales. While we waited for whales to blow we saw mobula rays, a big manta ray that came so close to our ship, sea lions swimming around and different types of sea birds such us nazca boobies, Galapagos petrels, shear waters and wedge rumped storm petrels. “The early bird gets the warm” so we woke up at 6:00 a.m. to whale watching and we got our worm-whales.
After that we had breakfast and then we came back to the bridge area to celebrate the crossing of the equator. “Welcome to the south!” our captain exclaimed. While clapping, laughing and having fun, we limbo across a flag-textile-line, that simulates the equator line. Few minutes later we arrived to Punta Vicente Roca on Isabela Island.
We went to explore this site on our zodiacs. Riding along the dramatic coastline we found many blue footed boobies resting in a very irregular cliff, Nazca bobbies and noddies terns too. Then we snorkeled to see green pacific marine turtles and a wide variety of fish.
In the afternoon we moved to Fernandina island, it is the most active volcano of Galapagos, the name of the volcano is “La Cumbre” it is 1,400 meters high, above sea level. It looks very impressive from the distance; its flanks are very stiff and cover by little vegetation, the entire island looks black, inhospitable, dramatic landscape. Along the coast is green because of the different types of mangroves that colonized the area few hundreds of years ago. At first glance you don’t see wildlife, but as soon as you get closer you notice that the coast is “infested” by crowded colonies of marine iguanas, there are a lot of pools formed in the intertidal zone, they are home for crabs, herons, small fish and baby sea lions that play and start to explore the marine world. Also we found there a spotted eagle ray, marine turtles. As soon as we started our walk we saw a Galapagos hawk, a bird on the top of the food chain; we as photographers were very excited of having such a magnificent bird so close to us. In Galapagos the animals are so fearless, in my opinion this is the only place in our planet where the animals are not afraid of humans and get so close to us. That fact makes the experience of our guests so unique.
Further in land we found a very abundant wildlife, crabs, snakes, lava lizards, yellow warblers, finches, and others; but a unique moment was to see a very small colony of flightless cormorants nesting. These animals are considered iconic birds, one of the best examples of adaptation and evolution in Galapagos. They have lost their abilities to fly, instead of they have gained power in their feet, and have become into expert divers, such as penguins.
At the end of the walk the sunlight displayed very intense golden colors, the best time of the day for taking pictures - but here on the equator sun sets very fast, few minutes later we were coming back to our ship after having a great day. It is a gift to be here, exploring this astonishing archipelago.
